PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PORTFOLIO PAPER

You are required to submit a personal development portfolio, which does not 2500 words. The marking criteria can be found in Appendix 3.

The assessment is designed to help you explore and reflect upon your future career path and the skills you have and need to develop in order to reach your academic development and employment goals.

Prepare a personal development portfolio, presented in report format which identifies the transferable skills you have developed in academic studies, personal life and the workplace, placing emphasis on the skills discussed during lectures. Produce a personal development learning log and action plan for your future academic and career developmental covering the next 3 years. Your personal development plan must also include and reference your CV.

** Please note that the learning Log, CV and action plan do not count towards the 2500 words requirement for the report. The action plan should be for the duration of your course.

Please answer the following questions to structure your portfolio:

Provide a reflective account based on comparing and contrasting your own experiences, employability skills and behaviors with those required by graduate employers.

What skills, experiences and behaviors are valued by graduate employers and why? How do your current employability skills match these requirements? You might consider work, volunteering, sports and other activities and experiences to justify your attainment of these skills. Include in your discussion what you have learnt about your current ability during this module that perhaps meets (or falls short) of the requirements of graduate employers.

Team working is an essential graduate employability skill. Assess and evaluate your team working skills as demonstrated during this module.

Consider how you have worked with others within team work situations and activities during the module, reflectingon your experiences during the mock assessment Centre and the group business challenges. Based on your understanding of effective team working, discuss how you might tackle these situations differently in the future?

3. Identify one graduate employer’s selection process and evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses against this process.

You will need to evaluate your own abilities based on your CV and/ or application form requirement and your performance and feedback from the assessed application form, the mock interview and assessment Centre tasks completed in class.

Compile a career plan covering the next 3 years. The career plan should cover areas of improvement identified above and comprise of an action plan with realistic SMART targets and a learning log explaining how you aim to achieve these targets. The learning log and action plan will be placed in the appendices while a commentary explaining these will be present within your PDP.

Your commentary will also outline any potential barriers and challenges that you anticipate in achieving your targets and goals explaining how you aim to address these?

The portfolio Must contain all 4 elements above and include referenced (reference list) and practical evidence (within appendices) to support your points and discussions.

Please also note that this is a Level 5 assignment. All students are therefore expected to justify their discussion using academic references. Students are expected to reference a minimum of twoscholarly journal articles and four academic text books to be clearly listed using Harvard referencing within a reference list presented at the end of the PDP report.

Trought. F (2012). Brilliant Employability Skills – How to stand out from the crowd in the graduate job market.

Appendix 3

1. Reflective Account

Criteria: Demonstrates an understanding of the graduate employment market and evaluates owns skills, experiences and behaviors, against employer expectations. Discussion is supported by and draws from personal experiences and evidence gained from the activities both within the module and work and personal experiences attained outside of the module. Analysis and discussions are supported by referenced evidence drawn from text books, journal articles, policy and survey reports and employer company information.

2. An evaluation of your team working skills as demonstrated during this module

Criteria: identifies value and understanding of teamwork and evaluates the impact of self when working with others. Discussion is supported by and draws from evidence from the group work within module. Analysis and reflection is supported by an understanding of concepts underpinning effective team work drawn from academic text books and journal articles.

3. Identify one graduate employer’s selection process and evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses against this process

Criteria: Demonstrates understanding of one employers selection methods and why they are used. Students are expected to self-evaluate their own performance in relation to the outlined employer selection methods which will include: CVs, application forms or interview and assessment Centre activities. Discussions must be supported by and draw upon evidence completed in class and/ or any other employment experiences. Where relevant students, will use academic references to fully justify any practical solutions that they highlight to support their future improvement in performance relative to each of these selection processes.

4. Career Action Plan

Criteria: Plan is effectively presented and summarized using a learning log and SMART goal targets, covering the next 3 years of development and progress. Learning log and SMART goals and targets must and will reflect shortfalls highlighted within portfolio discussions. This section must include a commentary identifying and explaining potential obstacles and outlining and reflecting on practical solutions in minimizing these. Discussion must also highlight how the students will monitor and review learning and SMART targets.

Presentation

Criteria

Fail >40%

40-50%

50-60%

60-70%

70%+

Structure, word count and referencing of evidence

Does not confirm to requirements.

Structure unclear, no evidence or referencing.

An attempt at structure but part unclear. Satisfactory use of evidence and referencing.

Largely conforms to requirements-good evidence and referencing clear.

Well presented with occasional inconsistencies in providing evidence and references.